Monster

I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe blink by blink…

“The world resists me and I resist the world,” I said. “That’s all there is. The mountains are what I define them as.” Ah, monstrous stupidity of childhood, unreasonable hope!

-John Gardner’s Grendel, “the Beowulf legend retold from the monster’s point of view”